From pest to ecosystem engineer

The writer Leila Philip adds to a genre of pro-beaver literature that turns out to be more populous than most of us may have known

Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America

Author: Leila Philip

Publisher: Twelve

Pages: 317

Price: $30
 

Despite all its hard work, the species known as Castor canadensis, or the North American beaver, commands too little respect. Commonly depicted as a pest that causes flooding where humans don’t want it, the beaver has a squat, rounded physique and herbivorous buck teeth that make it look decidedly less imposing than a wolf or a bald eagle. Even in Canada, where it is the country’s official animal, it was derided on the floor of Parliament as a “dentally defective rat.”

With Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America,